The Mozilla Foundation is set for an aggressive entry into the smartphone market with the Firefox OS-powered handsets. The non-profit foundation, which has allied with thirteen wireless service providers across the globe, will unveil its first smartphone in July.
According to Associated Press, a California -based firm known as The Mountain View has confirmed on Sunday that the Firefox OS smartphone will hit Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela during the summer. The companies involved in launching Firefox OS include Spain's Telefonica, China Unicom, America Movil along, Telecom Italia and Deutsche Telekom of Germany.
With the launch of the its smartphone, Mozilla seems intent to enter the smartphone race with leading technology firms Apple and Google. South Korea's LG , China's ZTE and Huawei are some of the manufactures who have agreed to make smartphones based on Firefox operating systems. ZTE's first Firefox OS-based smartphone, ZTE Open, is expected to be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The success of the Firefox OS seems dubious as the software is built on HTML5 technology unlike Google and Apple's operating systems which are based on proprietary technology.
Facebook had also been using HTML5 but stopped after it was found compromising on quality. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg called the technology as the company's "biggest mistake", reported Reuters.
Jay Sullivan, vice president of products at Mozilla, said that the use of the HTML5 platform will help in putting good third-party applications on Firefox.
